It’s also worth pointing out that the United States has absorbed millions of immigrants over the past 30 years, often from poorer Latin and South American countries. (The Census notes that the share of ethnic minorities has doubled over the last 33 years.) It’s possible that, even as these young families have raised their own living standards by moving to the U.S. and contributed to a growth economy, their below-average wages, when lumped into the aggregate, make it look like native-born families’ wage growth is worse than it really is.

Lower marriage rates may be a factor.

Unlike prior generations of young adults, the majority of Millennials have never been married